What should your website help someone do?
Before choosing a layout, describe the visitor’s next useful action. Is it to understand a service, request an estimate, buy a product or find practical information? One clear primary action helps you prioritise the content and the page structure.
Write the objective in a sentence: “Help local business owners understand our accounting service and request a consultation.” A sentence like this gives the team something more useful to work with than “make it modern”.
Write for a particular audience.
List the questions a prospective customer usually asks before contacting you. Include the doubts that slow down a decision, the language customers actually use and the information they already have.
Then separate the main audience from secondary visitors such as job applicants or existing customers. They may need different journeys rather than equal space on the homepage.
Agree on the pages and the source material.
Start with a simple page list: Home, About, Services and Contact. Add a dedicated page only when it answers a distinct need. A service detail page should explain who the service is for, the problem it addresses and what happens next.
Identify who will supply and approve the logo, photographs, service descriptions and contact information. Only publish client names, reviews and results that you have permission and evidence to use.
List the things that must connect.
Note any appointment system, enquiry workflow, payment provider, newsletter service or customer portal. Explain what should happen after a visitor completes each action, and who is responsible for that system.
A form that looks complete may still need a secure delivery service. A booking button may depend on availability data. Making those dependencies explicit keeps the proposal grounded in the complete journey.
Separate launch needs from later improvements.
Group requirements into essential at launch, useful next and optional. Agree a budget range, review process and decision-maker. Identify any deadline that depends on a campaign or event.
Finish the brief with acceptance criteria: the pages that must exist, devices to test, important user journeys, content approval and access handover. Your brief does not need to solve every design problem. It needs to make the starting point understandable.
Have a project in mind? Share a brief with Sanu Tech to start the discussion.